I forgot about those...I have a couple of pics, I wish we had taken more, especially on the night time visit!

SkyGuy's mom bought a ranch on the lower Green River, just upstream of Newaukum Creek. We got a notion to wander down to the creek to see if any adult fish were swirling around in there getting ready to spawn and instead ran into a couple of field workers from the Muckleshoot Tribe doing stream surveys.

They had a gravity trap set up in the creek and were capturing outmigrating smolts.

Here's their setup:





We watched them check it a couple of times during the day, but nothing made its way into the trap. It had been raining off and on all day and the creek was up pretty high, but they said that they rarely get many smolts in there during the day...very rarely...so we decided to head back to the ranch and work a bit, and then have dinner.

We rolled back down to the trap site around 9pm and watched them check the trap a couple of more times. Unfortunately it was pitch dark and pouring down rain so the camera phone had to stay in my pocket, but they caught a pretty good array of fish for us to check out.

A couple of steelhead, one of which was nearly nine inches long. A few very tiny and freshly emerged chums and pinks, and a handful of coho, too.

The workers were pretty cool dudes and were very happy to show us everything they were up to, and we even got to count a few fish with them.

These guys monitor this trap and another at Soos Creek all spring and summer, and spend the night in that tent right there in the bushes the whole time.

I'd like to go back down there soon and see what else they're getting in the trap these days.

Fish on...

Todd